Communication networks are widely used today; the variety of networks includes the Internet, wide-area networks (WANs), local-area networks (LANs), telephony networks, and wireless networks. The importance of network monitoring and testing is growing as well as the requirements for related methods and equipment. One particular aspect of network testing is active testing when a test device, e.g. a packet generator, injects test traffic into a device under test or into a portion of a network being tested.
Conventional test devices support a plurality of protocols in which they can generate traffic. Accordingly, the test devices have to be configured to work with these protocols; the test devices should contain data related to each of the supported protocols. This increases the complexity of the devices, which may undesirably increase their size and processing time. Further, such complexity increases the time and resources required for manufacturing the test devices.
In the ever-changing environment, test devices should be frequently updated to ensure testing of all protocols including the most recent ones. The updates or even replacement of the test devices are inconvenient and associated with cost. It thus becomes desirable to enable a test device to generate a stream of packets in the format of a new protocol for which the test device has not been configured and has no knowledge thereof.
U.S. Patent Applications 20030223376 published Dec. 4, 2003 in the name of Elliott et al. and 20040208129 published Oct. 21, 2004 in the name of Old et al. represent conventional systems for active testing of a network. In such systems, a test data generator generates traffic containing multiple streams associated with different network services. Transmitted over the network, the traffic is then received by another apparatus and the quality of transmission is evaluated based on the knowledge of the generated traffic.
Conventional devices for testing a communication device or a portion of a network are attached directly to a monitor port or passive network tap at a switch or element. In other words, the test traffic load should be generated locally, in proximity to the tested network, otherwise the test results would be affected by network conditions on the link(s) between the device under test (DUT) and the test device. Thus conventional devices used for active testing such as network analyzers, should be constantly moved which is inconvenient and costly, or be attached at multiple locations on a network, which may be cost prohibitive considering the complexity of the devices used for active testing of multiple protocols.
Accordingly, there is a need to mitigate the above disadvantages and to provide a novel method and a system for active testing a communication network or a device therein.